The Sling and the Stone. First and Second Series. By
Charles Voysey, B.A. (Triibner.)—These are two volumes of sermon& about which we find it difficult to speak with moderation, the more difficult because we prize that right of "free speaking in the Church of England " which Mr. Voysey is doing his utmost to discredit. A clergyman may well believe that the Old Testament exhibits a lower standard of morality than the New; but that is a very different thing from saying that it abounds with "barbarous and immoral conceptions of God." And what could be more absurd—we do not speak of reverence—than to say that God is represented in the Book of Deuteronomy as "actuated by motives of personal vanity " in bringing Israel into Canaan ? In fact this clergy- man appears to use in his pulpit the same language which one some- times hears from ignorant debaters in the streets. He talks in the vaguest way of the Scriptures having been possibly corrupted by ." popes, and monks, and priests." Can it be that he is really so ignorant of Biblical criticism as to write this in good faith ? Has he never heard, for instance, of the great Codices of the fourth century ? What date does he give for his interpolating popes and monks ? Again and again ho propounds difficulties, and neglects the most obvious explanation of them. In short, he plays the part of an advocatus diaboli. What reasonable man ever supposed our Lord to mean Moses and the Prophets when He spoke of " the thieves and robbers" who came before Him ? or failed to perceive the true meaning of "I came not to send peace, but a sword "? Mr. Voysey's arrogance of opinion almost passes belief. He thinks Balsam a most upright person, whom the Apostolic writer much maligned by saying that he " loved the wages of unrighteousuess." The fact of Christ's resurrection he is ready to accept, that is, it appears, till an Order in Council releases him from the obligation ; but he thinks that it has nothing to do with our hopes of another life. St. Paul, of course, thought otherwise, but what is ho to Mr. Voysoy? And all this comes from a man who is so ignorant of Church history as to confound Augustine of Hippo with Augustine of Canterbury, and can write such nonsense as this—" that if the bodies of all men are to be raised like Christ's, and restored as they were before corruption, there would not only bo no standing room on the earth for them, but they would form a closely packed mass thousands of times larger than the earth itself." Why, to give an answer after Solomon's method, they could all find standing room in Yorkshire.
Previous page
